The next time I asked Karoline what she wanted to learn in kindergarten, I was cooking. She wants to learn to cook.

I began to futher test my theory.

I’m knitting. She wants to “knit better.”

I’m dusting. She wants to polish furniture.

I’m doing laundry. She wants to learn to fold socks “the tricky way.”

If I’m doing it, she wants to learn to do it. And if it has to do with bringing order and beauty to her environment, all the better. She is sensitive to order and beauty in her world right now.

And so she shall work alongside me, both of us using our hands. Whether we call it “practical life” or “life skills,” little ones should be spending lots of time doing meaningful activities with their hands. They should learn to use real tools (whether knitting or sewing or cooking or woodworking or vacuuming dust bunnies) carefully and to return their environments to order every single time

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